The Scarlet Flower
by Tavina
Summary: "No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell." The story of how Senju Hashirama came to Uzushio to request Uzumaki Mito's hand in marriage is a strange one, and it's cast in both heaven and hell. Sunfall/Moonrise 'verse. Warring Clans Era. HashiMito, One-sided HashiMada (But it's complicated.) MadaraOC (Complicated)
1. In the Beginning

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

* * *

"So if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me, because I, too, am fluent in silence."

-R. Arnold

* * *

She's nervous, somewhat. They are about to meet the Senju party, close to the center of Fire Country, and it's the first time she's been to another country before. _Chin up, Uzumaki Mito, you're the one who requested this job from Chichi-ue after Anya caught a fever a week ago._

She's an aspiring seal master, not a medic in training, but she's heard that the war is going badly, and that their Senju allies need all the help that they can get. She's heard the stories of war from Chichi-ue, and in those moments, he always seems more haunted than his forty-some years.

So she's here, in the middle of the medic squad, smoothing down the immaculate silk of her short kimono and adjusting her battle grieves. "Remember not to tell them that I'm...Mito-hime."

It won't do to have her identity get out in the middle of hostile territory. There are always problems, always possibilities. She could be kidnapped and held for ransom against Chichi-ue, and that would hurt him deeply, so no one is supposed to slip up about this. For extra assurance, Chichi-ue has even sent Naosu-jisan to lead the party. Still, she's nervous, so she checks. "I'm just like everyone else."

Not true. She'd been born the eldest daughter of a king, so she's always been taught to be graceful, to never say too much, to always weigh her options. She is supposed to make a good match, one that will help Uzu in the future.

She is supposed to maintain the image of Uzu while she represents Uzu, and she always represents Uzu.

She is Uzumaki Mito, daughter of Uzumaki Ashina and Chigusa Naokano, so she will never be just like everyone else.

Still, she has to pretend.

"Of course," Sayuri whispers back. "You look just like everyone else."

Well, everyone else does have red hair, and she's wearing the plain cream kimono of a medic in training. So she supposes that this is true. She looks like everyone else.

No one will be able to tell that Chichi-ue had sent his daughter with the medic squad.

She relaxes slightly and pushes her chakra sense outwards.

The Senju are here.

At their head is a tall man wearing a white headband knotted on the side in red armor with a sword slung over his back. _He must be important then._

At his side is a young man of about eighteen with long straight brown hair and tanned skin. "You must be the Uzu party then." He flashes them a grin. "We were waiting for you." There are others appearing out of the trees behind them.

Naosu-jisan steps forward and bows politely. "We have been sent by Ashina-sama to aid your efforts. I am Chigusa Naosu, and these are core members of our medical team in Uzu."

"Senju Butsuma." So this is the Senju Clan head, Chichi-ue's often mentioned friend.

"Senju Hashirama!" It's the young man who gestures for them all to follow, and chatters on excitedly as he does so. "We're so fortunate to have you here."

Butsuma-dono lets him do so, but his eyes pass over their group and pause on her for longer than necessary. She averts her eyes.

As one, the medic squad moves forward, and Mito follows them, shuffled into the crowd.

Just like everyone else.

* * *

They are hunkered down, all eight of them together around a low fire in the middle of camp. It isn't cold per se, here, in the Land of Fire, but the evening is chilly and they require a fire to cook food. As it is not a wood fire, it does not give off smoke for an enemy to detect. Naosu-jisan has gone to speak with Butsuma-dono regarding their work for the morning.

"Mito-chan?" Naosu-jisan sets a hand on her shoulder and gestures to the tent that he'd just returned from. "Butsuma-dono wants to see you."

So he had noticed something about her, because she doesn't look different from everyone else, but he had still asked for her. She smooths her sweaty hands over the bottom of her kimono and walks forward. "Thank you for telling me, Naosu-jisan." Naosu-jisan is the head of the Medic Corps and one of the few people in the world who calls her Mito-chan daily. He is Haha-ue's elder brother, and her dearest uncle.

She suspects that Chichi-ue sent him specifically to watch over her. She does not find this covert display of care to be displeasing. Chichi-ue will worry, as is his nature, and she will do her best to make sure that he has no real cause to, as is her nature.

 _Best get this over with now. To wait is to waste._

She pushes the cloth aside and bows. "Senju-dono? Naosu-sensei said that you wanted to speak to me?" She is unused to bowing so low.

"Naosu-san said your name is Mito." Butsuma-dono stands with his back to her, so she cannot read his mood from his face. Instead, she watches how he stands, his clasped hands, the line of his shoulders.

"Yes." There is no harm in telling him that. She is Mito. She has always been Mito. Being Mito is not special in the slightest. Chichi-ue had chosen strong names for his sons- _Kyoya, Skylark; Korui, Rising Sun; Masato, Exalted Leader; Ashiro, Standing Generation; Aruta, Iron Tower_ -but Mito merely means beautiful person.

It is a common name, the most common of her siblings' names. _Kanae is graceful crow, but Kanae is a name that means much to us._

She is never more grateful for how common her name is than at this moment.

He turns around to glare in her direction, but it is not at her, per se. It is about her, but it is not _at_ her. "What possessed your father to send you here?"

She blinks. "Senju-dono?" He has guessed then. She is not certain why or how, because she has not met him, from what she remembers, but he has guessed, and she will not lie, not to Chichi-ue's friend.

"What possessed Uzumaki Ashina to lose the mountain of sense I know he owns to send you here?" Butsuma-dono does not seem to be pleased with Chichi-ue, but this is hardly Chichi-ue's fault.

"I volunteered after one of the medics fell ill last week. There was no time to find someone else." Mito raises her chin precisely three degrees and looks Butsuma-dono in the eye. "Chichi-ue wishes to aid you to the best of Uzu's abilities, and to be short a pair of hands is a terrible thing." She'd seen the camp, seen briefly, what little medical equipment they had here in these temporary shelters, and wondered how anyone survived treatment.

"A battlefield is no place for a princess." It's the first time that either of them has acknowledged that she is different. She doesn't like it. Butsuma-dono sighs heavily. "You should go home, Mito-chan."

"I will not go home, Butsuma-dono." She folds her hands together and tilts her head to the side ten degrees. "For here, I am just like everyone else. No princess exists in your camp, and one more medic can save a great deal."

"And if you are hurt somehow?" He sits, his hands on his temples, the lines about his mouth creasing sharply as he frowns. "What should I tell your father then?"

There is such tension in his shoulders, in his spine. _He is younger than Chichi-ue._ She realizes with a jolt. _And yet he looks so much older. War ages men before their time._

She raises a glowing green hand and touches his shoulder, pulling the headache away. "You will tell him that Uzumaki Mito did the best she could to save lives, and she did not die purposelessly." She says. "He will understand."

Chichi-ue would not blame the Senju for losing her. He has seen war and horror more than she can comprehend or wants to and still when she had volunteered, he had looked at her long and hard and let her go anyway. He would grieve; everyone would, but they will survive.

There are many things that can kill: war is one; the sea is another. She has survived the sea for sixteen years. She will survive half a year of war if that is what the gods so desire.

"And you, Mito-chan?" Butsuma-dono asks her. "Are you not afraid of death?"

"I have lived by the sea all my life." She swallows hard. "When I was seven, one of the fishing expeditions did not make it back to harbor before the storm. A hundred lives were lost that night as the sea ripped the ship hull open from prow to stern. We found bodies washing up on the rocks for days afterward." She'd found one of the corpses as a child diving for pearls. The slack mouth and bulging, swollen, waxy face had stayed with her nightmares for a long time. "To live by the sea is to live with death." She shakes her head. "I am not afraid to die, Butsuma-dono."

When she was nine, the riptide pulled her under.

She had stared up at the lights dancing on the surface for long moments as bubbles floated up from her mouth wondering if this is the moment when she dies until Masato-nii's strong hands had pulled her out of the water.

He had been only eleven at the time, but he had dived out of his little fishing boat for her.

She would not like to die, but if she dies here in this foreign land, she will still not regret coming.

* * *

In the days afterwards, they sweep through the camp, curing the illnesses that have arisen in this wet winter weather to the best of their abilities. There are some things that not even medical chakra can heal, but what cannot be healed can be soothed.

That is what brings her to the dwelling of Butsuma-dono's sons this weak winter morning.

"Hashirama-san and Tobirama-san?" She asks, waiting for an affirmative sound before entering. "Naosu-jisan asked me to check on you two. Everyone else has been looked over at least once already."

They are sons of the clan head, so their tent is a little more spacious than most. Where five or six might sleep at night, it is only the two of them here.

"We're fine." Tobirama-san snaps at her. He is perhaps, about her age with white hair and angry red eyes.

"We're not fine." Hashirama-san says at the same time. "Tobi is running a fever. I'm sure of it."

Tobirama-san snaps around to glare at his elder brother. "Niisan, be _quiet._ " So he is running a fever.

He shouldn't be this pale even if pallor is his natural look.

"The quicker I check on both of you, the earlier I can leave." She offers. He doesn't seem like the type of person to appreciate strangers, even friendly ones, and she doesn't know either of them well.

It is the right incentive to offer. He thrusts a hand in her direction, and she settles two green fingers over his pulse. He hisses, and she draws back.

Her chakra had barely brushed him at all. "Tobirama-san?"

He shakes his wrist impatiently. "Get on with it."

"He's a chakra sensor." Hashirama-san comes to watch from behind her, peering over her shoulder. "Did you use a lot of chakra? That bothers him sometimes."

"Niisan!" Tobirama-san hisses in his elder brother's general direction. "Don't go around randomly telling other people damaging information."

"I did use more chakra than was recommended for a sensor." She meets Tobirama-san's angry gaze evenly. "A medic has to know these sorts of things, Tobirama-san. It could be potentially damaging to your chakra coils if I didn't."

He nods once, curtly, and doesn't say anything. She takes his hand once more.

She resolves his fever easily, spreading her chakra thin through his lungs and erases the infection from a small cut on his hand, and the sickness from the rest of him, purged in the space of two breaths.

It is a common sickness. She's gotten used to the motions of it during her time here in the Senju Camp.

He nods to her again in acknowledgement. Surely he can think more clearly now that he is well, but he doesn't say much more, just hovers around the edges of the tent, unwilling to leave his brother alone with her.

He is distrustful, but she means no harm, so it does not matter. He will find no fault with her.

Mito moves onto Hashirama-san.

He offers her his arm with a cheery smile. "I don't think I caught the illness, and I'm unlikely to notice if you hit me over the head with a wagon load of chakra so it shouldn't matter much." She's met bright smiles before, but Hashirama-san positively _glows._ It is unusual.

She takes his wrist and probes deeper.

His chakra comes up to greet her, bright, bubbly, _sick._ There is an infection in his blood that has settled into his lungs. She hasn't seen it in this camp before, but Naosu-jisan does treat several cases of it every year as the sailors returned from whaling.

The wasting disease. It is generally brought on by wet, chilly weather, contact with someone else who has it-it is easy for a sailor to contract it in an unfamiliar harbor-but here? Hashirama-san is the only case of it that she, or any one of the medical team has come across. How did he contract such a disease? Are there entire mainland villages wasting with this disease?

She sits down. "This may take a moment." She withdraws her hand. She has only aided Naosu-jisan in the recovery process before, but Naosu-jisan is busy with recent injuries, and it is unlikely that she can run out to ask him to come help. "Have you been coughing more lately?"

Hashirama-san blinks at her. "No?"

"No chest pains? No fatigue?"

He shakes his head.

"You've been eating regularly?"

From behind her, Tobirama-san laughs, a harsh, barking sound. "No one eats regularly around here. We eat when we can get it."

Alright. The infection is likely still latent. She hasn't detected it in his blood. It's stayed in small pockets in his lungs. "It hasn't spread yet and become infectious." She whispers to herself. Louder, to Hashirama-san, "Would you mind sitting down?"

She needs to burn out the infection, bit by bit, comb the dips and ridges of the insides of his lungs to make sure that all of it has been dealt with.

It will take longer than she has planned, but hopefully, someone will come to help her, though she doubts it. There is much to do here.

"What's going on?" Tobirama-san paces in and out of the edges of her vision. "Why did you ask Niisan all those questions?"

"He has a latent infection in his lungs." She observes and centers herself, pulling more chakra to her fingers from the meridian at her core. "It will become active should it be left without treatment and then it will cause the symptoms that I asked about."

Tobirama-san stops his pacing and comes to sit on Hashirama-san's other side. "But it will be cured? You can cure it?"

"Our sailors that come back with it after whaling for months do not die of it." She tells him. "But the infection must be cleaned bit by bit. Leaving the slightest amount of it will cause a resurgence."

That is why normally such a job is handled by at least two medics, one for each lung, and a fresh chakra sense to catch the little mistakes made by the other.

But she has been taught by the best, and Mito is nothing if not thorough. She is confident that there will be no resurgence.

"It's alright, Tobi." Hashirama-san raises his free hand and tries to ruffle his brother's hair, but Tobirama-san ducks away. "I think Mito-san's perfectly trustworthy." He turns to her then, with eyes wide and dark like the earth here in the Land of Fire and smiles. "Your chakra is very warm."

She concludes then, as her heart twists in her chest, that Senju Hashirama is an idiot. She has just told him that he has a rather difficult infection in his lungs, and the first thing he thinks to say to her is that her chakra is warm.

Still, there is something nice about being told that she is warm. It gives her the fortitude to go forward.

* * *

Hashirama-Mito has taken to calling him just Hashirama because he is only four months older than her, and it is silly to continue to refer to him as Hashirama-san when he quite openly calls her Mito-chan and slings an arm around her shoulder as if he's known her all his life-is an idiot of the worst order, the type that doesn't know it and shows rare flashes of brilliance so that other people can't quite believe it.

Butsuma-dono had sent him out on a mission to guard a nearby village against Uchiha raiders, and he had gone, willingly, gladly. That isn't the problem.

The problem is that he comes back successful but angry, unwilling, unbending, and buts heads with Butsuma-dono over something that she has no way of understanding without any context. The argument had been almost violent despite its brief nature, and Hashirama has stormed off while dragging her along with him a little ways out of camp to a fork of the Nakano river.

"Mito-chan," he begins, while picking up a clump of snow, and flinging it at the ice. It skitters across and shatters across the opposite bank. "Do you ever feel that your Chichi-ue doesn't see things the same way you do?"

Why is he asking her this? There are men and women in this camp that he's known all his life. Why must he ask her when she has only been here for a few weeks?

Still, it is beneath her to lie to him. "Chichi-ue and I are very different." She says at last. "So of course he doesn't see this world like I do."

Chichi-ue despises war and suffering. She knows nothing of it. Still knows little of fighting even now. She might have experimented with battle seals, might spare with her friends, but it is not the same as fighting. She's never killed anyone before. Chichi-ue slaughtered children the last time Uzu marched to war.

Her serious middle-aged Chichi-ue is a grown man. Mito is nothing more than an old child at the age of sixteen.

"It doesn't bother you?" He's stopped throwing snow at least.

"No." And because he looks quizzical, she adds, "Chichi-ue lets me do what I need to." He'd agreed to let her come, even if he had then all but ordered Naosu-jisan to keep an eye on her.

He sighs. "I suppose it's different then." He picks up a stick and doodles in the snow. "Chichi-ue will never let me do what I want in this case. Is peace such an impossible dream?"

"I don't think so." Uzu has been at peace for her entire life. For the entirety of its existence, it has never been breached by a mainland foe. Uzu's peaceful. Is it so hard to imagine that other places can be peaceful as well?

They sit in silence for a long moment. She doesn't want to think badly of Butsuma-dono for he is Chichi-ue's dear friend, and Chichi-ue is not friends with bad men, but it is hard to think that Hashirama would ask for so very much.

Hashirama is nothing if not guilelessly giving.

"Mito-chan?" He asks after he's stopped doodling. "What is Uzu like?"

Uzu? "It is colder now, than it is here." She says slowly. "The winter storms will have sealed the harbor closed to the ships, but that just means that it is more likely that school is in session then." The market would be small; the days would be shorter, the nights longer. "Back at home preparations for the winter festival will be starting." Tanaka-san would come up from his thatched hut by the sea and spend the day with Kanae-chan up in the square. He has grown more surly in the years since she was a small child, but for Kanae-chan, he can still conjure up a smile and even a few chuckles. "My little brothers will try to run away to sea in a ship once more, but Chichi-ue will catch them at it." She smiles despite herself.

The Twins are really very terrible, and are the cause of at least a half of Chichi-ue's gray hair, but they are loveable all the same.

"You have siblings?" Hashirama blinks. "You've never mentioned them before."

"I am the fourth child of seven." Mito responds before she can catch herself. "I have three elder brothers, two younger brothers and a little sister." Kyoya-niisama would be at home now as well, and in the cramped quarters, he and Masato-nii would snipe at each other until Kanae-chan can come between them to calm the ripples they've thrown up in their wake.

"Oh." Hashirama smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "I have Tobi." And then, in a whisper that she almost doesn't catch. "And I had Itama and Kawarama."

Had.

Past tense.

She takes his hand despite herself- _it must be hard-_ and squeezes.

"You must miss them." He whispers. "It will be the winter festival soon, and they are all there while you are here."

Mito folds her hands together in her lap. "They will still be there when I return. I am needed here now."

"Mmm." Hashirama hums and fiddles with his hands. "Thank you." He holds a golden hothouse flower in his hands. So it is true that he has the Mokuton.

She takes it and marvels at the beauty of it, the perfectly formed stem, the curling petals. "You like flowers?" She asks.

And for the first time today, he smiles, small and shy. "I like gardening, and flowers are pretty, and so…" He trails off, looking away.

 _And so are you._ Her mind supplies for her. Senju Hashirama does look like he belongs among flowers, and he is pretty in a very forest and earth sort of way that she has not seen before coming to the mainland.

Her friends at home fall to pieces over Kyoya-niisama's sharply chiseled features and clawed hands, but Mito rather thinks that Hashirama looks prettier, _warmer._ Her fingers curl a little tighter around the stem of this perfect golden flower. "Thank you very much." She rises to go back.

She has met plenty of suitors since the age of fifteen, boys and men who want to marry the Pearl of Uzu, the eldest daughter of a well-loved king, but she rather suspects that Senju Hashirama is not a suitor.

He'd offered her a flower as thanks because he likes flowers, because he is guileless and giving.

He doesn't even know that she's a princess.

He is unlike another man she's met before.

"Hashirama!" A young woman stomps towards them, a hand on her hip. "You know you shouldn't be out here, and god forbid, why on earth would you ever drag one of the Uzushio medics out here? It's hardly safe."

She has dark brown hair like most of her clan, but hazel eyes that tended towards green. _Toka? Her name is Toka right?_

Sayuri had checked up on her, so Mito is not entirely certain of her name.

"It is alright." She brushes the snow from her kimono. "I am not defenseless, and Hashirama isn't careless." They haven't gone far.

Toka casts a searing glare in Hashirama's direction. "My baby cousin can sense enemies about as much as a smushed brick. Don't trust him on it."

Hashirama slumps comically. "You could have been nicer about that, Toka…" So Mito was right. Her name is Toka.

She shrugs and loops an arm through Mito's and marches back toward camp. "I'm Senju Toka, Hashirama's my cousin."

"Mito." She offers, still holding the golden flower in her other hand.

Toka raises one finely arched brow at her. "No clan name?"

Mito smiles, slow and wide. "What's the most common clan name in Uzu?" She has two hundred cousins. Her clan is large. She is Uzumaki Mito.

Toka nods. "Don't read too much into Hashirama's presents." She waves a hand airily behind them in Hashirama's direction. "He's hopeless when it comes to good ones, why I remember that the year I turned seventeen he found me the ugliest fish hairpin that he could find in all of Kakunodate and…"

It is good to have someone else to talk to again, someone who doesn't care that she is a princess, and in fact, doesn't even know that she is one.

* * *

The good days were not built to last. The camp had been safe from Uchiha raiding parties, but she has only been on the mainland for two months when they come with smoke, and fire, and blood.

She wakes quickly and starts shaking Sayuri beside her. "Wake up, Sayu. We have to move." It will not do to have the Uchiha discover them, and while she is no sensor, she does not sleep heavily these days.

Enka-kun gathers up the others, and they make for the treeline through the pandemonium. They are not fighters, not any of them besides Mito. They are healers by profession and specialty and while they aren't defenseless by any means, they know only basic battle sealing and only keep up with sparring as a way to stay fit.

Their vows say that they do not kill.

Mito has no such vows. She is an aspiring sealing master with battle seals as her specialty.

With Naosu-jisan gone, it is her job to protect their group of eight to the best of her ability.

"Help me with the defensive seals." She whispers to Enka-kun and Sayuri as Maiko-chan quiets the others behind them. They haven't been sighted by the Uchiha yet, and the Senju have surged onto the defensive, beating them back, matching them measure for measure.

Together, with shaking hands, they form the hand signs and raise the triangle. Should any of them be disrupted the seal will come unravelled, come undone, leaving the rest of their friends to the mercies of the Uchiha, but the triangle is the strongest shape, and with their combined chakra, it should keep the others fresh to tend to the wounds after this battle.

The only unlucky thing is that this keeps them on the outside of the barrier, easily able to be seen, and confined to a small square of two feet by two feet. A foot must remain on the point of the triangle at all times.

Mito holds her nerve and waits.

The fire lights the camp red with burning tents, but Tobirama races through, dowsing several with a quick burst of water jutsu and then moving on back into the fray of brawling limbs.

It is wild and chaotic, filled with screams and the clash of weapons, and blood is dark in the firelight.

Mito wraps a hand around the tanto in the sleeve of her kimono that Haha-ue had pressed into her hand when she left home, and prays she doesn't have to use it.

Across from her, at the other point, she sees Sayuri do the same with one of her hairpins.

Behind her, Maiko-chan starts humming a lullaby. "Oh, won't you come with me? When the moon is made of gold, and in the morning sun, we'll be sailing."

It helps to think of home in the midst of the acrid smell of smoke, the iron scent of blood, the clash of metal and the screams. Home with the Twins playing cards and Kanae stitching patterns onto clothing, home with pearl earrings and dull gray skies and the scent of the sea.

Hashirama is there, racing through the battlefield, the forest bending to his command, lifting comrades out of the way, spearing enemies...he is fearsome like this.

They are not discovered.

They are not discovered, and the Senju repel the Uchiha raiders the best they can, and as the fighting dies down, the others rush forward to tend to the wounded.

Mito slumps for a moment, where she had been standing at the point and recenters her chakra once more. She has used a good portion of her stores powering the barrier seal. A third gone and not to be replenished without rest and food.

But there is much to be done, so she climbs to her feet and starts forward, searching among the bodies in the west for those that still live.

She finds a young man in dull red armor bleeding from a thrust to her stomach.

A kunai embeds itself in his throat before Mito's glowing hand can touch him.

Toka stands behind her, dark and grim. "Uchiha. Don't waste chakra on that one."

Uchiha? It sickens her to leave the injured behind, but this is a warzone, so this is a war, and that man had attacked a camp pitched in for the night, would have slaughtered Mito's friends if he broke past the seal, and Mito doesn't know what to to think, so she doesn't.

She nods once to Toka and rises. "Where are the wounded that have to be tended to now?"

Toka's bleeding from a gash on her leg and a small cut on her face, but she doesn't look too heavily injured. There have to be plenty more close to death.

Toka leans on her shoulder as they limp through the burned out husks of tents towards the center of a clearing. "We've tried to find as many people as we can. They're closer to a place that we can protect them better."

"Are there many?"

"Not as many as there would have been." Toka frowns darkly. "Neither of the Uchiha Brothers made an appearance tonight. I don't like it."

Mito makes a vague sound in her throat, but she doesn't ask too much. Toka must be referring to Uchiha Madara, the one they call a demon, and Uchiha Izuna, the one they call the demon's shadow. She doesn't know if she is unsettled or relieved that they were not here tonight. In the end, she doesn't have the time to care.

Toka stays with her as she stitches the bone of a clan member back together, passing her bandages and gauze and using what chakra she had left to fill a basin with water jutsu.

They work in sync til dawn.

By dawn those that were not healed and were not dead could only be soothed. Naosu-jisan sends the rest of the team back to sleep and heads into the medical tent to tend to those last shinobi himself despite the gray ring of fatigue around his mouth.

Mito is still awake, down to a fifth of her chakra, but still able to move should her uncle need her, so she and Toka sit down on a few stones near the tent, and she bandages the other woman's leg.

Toka shakes her head when Mito tries to heal the cut on her face. "It doesn't hurt much and there's worse to care for. It's fine." Mito draws her hand away, and they sit silent for a bit.

"Where did you all go during the battle?" Toka brushes the long bang away from her face, hissing as it goes over the cut. "I didn't see you until it was all over."

"A barrier seal." Mito sighs. "The medics are bound by a vow not to kill so trying to help with the battle would have been pointless."

Toka opens her mouth to say more, but at that moment, Naosu-jisan raises his voice inside the tent. "What do you mean I can't say the gods' rites for a dying man? This boy is no more than a child!"

"That's an Uchiha." Butsuma-dono growls. "I don't know how or why he got inside, but we do not harbor Uchihas here."

"I am a medic of Uzu." Naosu-jisan snaps back. "And I know a dying child when I see one. He stays until he is dead."

"We will give him a painless death and move camp immediately."

"You will move camp without us." Naosu-jisan's voice is as icy as the northern wind. "A medic doesn't abandon his job before he dies, and a proper burial, and he most certainly does not condone killing an already dying child." _A medic preserves life until the last breath leaves. A medic will not deny a patient based on prejudice or past grudge. A medic does not kill._

The three central tenets to becoming a medic in Uzu. Every medic holds these vows dearer than their own life.

"You pig-headed man." Butsuma-dono ducks out of the tent. "You will lead more people to their deaths with your unyielding ways." His armor is dyed rust red with blood, and there is a trail of dried blood on his cheek from a graze on his temple, but he looks otherwise unhurt.

Mito rises, suddenly unsure of herself.

She hadn't protested when Toka killed that Uchiha man, but Naosu-jisan is willing to risk death to protect that boy inside the tent from a quicker death by Butsuma-dono's hand.

Who is in the right?

Who has the right to decide who should die and who should live?

Butsuma-dono sweeps past, snapping out orders about dismantling the camp. They are retreating back to one of the many Senju outposts in the Land of Fire roughly eight hours' march north of here. It will take them until nightfall to get there with the wounded.

He fully intends to leave Naosu-jisan and the others then. Fully intends to leave her.

Toka heads off to help her clansmen pack up what remained of camp.

Mito scrubs her face and pushes her way into the tent. "Naosu-jisan, they will truly leave without you."

He doesn't look up from where he kneels as he offers the Uchiha boy water from a flask. "Then Senju Butsuma-dono will leave without me. That is hardly my concern."

The boy on the ground shudders and groans, his eyes staring blankly up into the fabric of the tent, his mouth slack. He is unaware of her uncle's kindness, unaware of what it would cost them. She wonders what sort of heart Naosu-jisan has, that it offers such kindness even to those who will cost him his life and his comfort when they will not be appreciative.

His heart is far kinder than her own, far stronger.

"But, Jisan…" Mito trails off. She doesn't know how to say it, doesn't know what to do. "Jisan, if you're left behind then it will be dangerous."

"I think you will find that everyone else wants to stay as well." He finally raises his head, and she sees the fatigue in her uncle's eyes. "Mito-chan, you're the only one who wants to go."

"What?" She looks around. Sure enough, the rest of the team is gathered outside the tent flap when they should have been asleep. "Why?"

They are here to help the Senju. They were sent here to help the Senju. "To stand by and let another kill the defenseless is not the medic's way." Enka-kun whispers as he comes to stand by Naosu-jisan's shoulder. "The Senju have broken more than Chigusa-shishou's vows today."

She hadn't felt bound by the vows when Toka killed the Uchiha girl last night, but Enka-kun, Sayuri, Maiko-chan, the others, they were bound by their vows. The Senju hadn't respected that and vows are everything. Blood rights, promises, vows they are what this world is built on. Not even a Hoshigaki would be an oathbreaker.

If you are an oathbreaker no person would house you, no one would help you, you are cast out when you become an oathbreaker. The Senju hadn't cared that they twisted oaths last night. _How different we are._

"But if you healed the Uchiha they would come back to harm the Senju." Mito whispers.

"If we offered them clemency instead of scorched earth maybe they wouldn't want to harm the Senju so badly." Maiko-chan mutters, her hands clenched to fists.

Behind her, Junko-kun nods. "When neither side gives, neither side can win."

So it is a divide then. A divide, and once again, she is standing on the other side.

"I'm not bound by vows." She whispers at last. "And I still want to help the Senju." She has made friends, Hashirama, Toka and even Tobirama had thawed, here with the Senju while the others have always stood just a little apart.

The last time she healed Tobirama after a mission of his, he hadn't even been prickly. He'd been appreciative in his own quiet way.

She doesn't know what she is supposed to do. She wants to stay, but she also wants to go. This is not her home, and the Senju are not her people, but she feels that her work isn't finished here.

Naosu-jisan steps forward and hugs her tightly. "Then go, Mito-chan, if that is what your heart demands."

She blinks back the salt pricking at the corners of her eyes. _How blessed am I, with people that understand me?_

Enka-kun clasps her on the shoulder. Sayu and Maiko-chan sweep her up into a fierce hug. Junko-kun nods.

"Uzu will still be there when you decide to return."

No matter what, Uzu will be unchanging and stable. She nods, and picks her pack up from by the tent flap where the others had left it.

"Thank you."

* * *

 **A.N.** So I have about 30 thousand words of this sitting around in my drive, odds and ends, bits and pieces, especially since I'm still working through the earlier stages of Sunfall/Moonrise. And I thought, well, might as well organize it into cohesive chapters and things. Thus, this was born.

It'll cover quite a few more years than the rest of the stories in this 'verse, just because I needed to figure out the backstory between the current HashiMito dynamics. So several more chapters before we get to where Sunfall/Moonrise begins.

It's surprisingly easy to write about Mito. She's someone steady in her convictions, someone who doesn't make friends easily, calm, graceful, elegant, with a cutting tongue as she grows up more, and a little bit less of an optimist than Kanae.

Anyway, I hope you like reading this as much as I like writing this.

~Tavina


	2. The Seeds We Sow

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

* * *

"'You're gonna be happy,' said life, 'but first I'll make you strong'."

-Chavela Vargas

* * *

She goes in search of Toka on dead feet. But her decision's been made, she cannot regret it now.

The other girl doesn't say much when Mito joins the march with her pack slung over her shoulder. No, it is Hashirama who speaks.

"The other Uzu healers are following us to the Northern Outpost then?"

Mito shakes her head. "No." No, she is leaving her people and Uzu behind by marching further inland. _I will save lives._

 _I am making the right choice. I have to be._

If she turns back now, she can still make it back to Naosu-jisan and the others. She will not turn back.

"Then what are you doing here?" Tobirama moves until he is on her other side. Now she has Hashirama on her left, Tobirama on her right, and Toka right behind her.

"Naosu-jisan and the others are going home." She takes a deep breath. "I've decided to go with you to the Northern Outpost."

"Che." Tobirama kicks a clump of snow off of his boots. "So they've all washed out then. The first taste of war has them running back to their homes for safety."

"That's not what happened at all." It is wrong to think that Naosu-jisan and the others are going home because they are sick of the horrors of war.

Everyone is sick of the horror, but they would have stayed had the Senju respected them. "You broke their medic's vows. They had to go, else they'd be labeled oathbreakers."

Tobirama's blank look is enough to confirm that the Senju didn't understand the gravity of what they were doing.

She takes a very deep breath, and lets it out.

Unintentional oathbreaking is better than she'd hoped for.

It wasn't a question of respect then. It was a question of culture. Well, she'd only have to explain then. "A medic vows to protect life without discrimination, to offer aid to those who need it. A medic doesn't kill."

"Well that's foolish." Toka mutters from behind her. "What if you have to kill to preserve the lives of your clansmen?"

"That is for other people like the border guard to cover. It is not a medic's duty to think of that." No, most of the time, Naosu-jisan and the medic team are far from the frontlines. It is rarely like like it was last night.

And Chichi-ue would not forbid giving aid to their enemies should Naosu-jisan be comforting a dying Hoshigaki.

But then, should a dying Hoshigaki boy live, he would never again raise a blade against Uzu because the Hoshigaki understand life debts.

Do the Uchiha understand life debts? Do the Senju?

"You come from a different world, Mito-chan." Hashirama says slowly. "But if everyone else is leaving, why are you coming with us?"

"I'm an aspiring seals specialist." She doesn't say Seal Master. She suspects that they wouldn't understand that designation either. "I am not a medic, and no one has broken any vows I've made."

"What's wrong with being an oathbreaker?" Tobirama asks suddenly after a long pause as they keep marching. "It's just a word."

"Oathbreakers are not welcome in Uzu." She has grown up with the idea that it would be a kinder choice to drown in Breaker's Bay than to live as an oathbreaker. It is jarring to hear him call it just a word. "Oathbreakers have no kin, no clan name, no rights. They may not be housed, fed, or aided. An oathbreaker who does not take their own life lives a living death."

Hashirama sucks in a harsh breath. "And that is what would have awaited them in Uzu if they stayed longer with us?"

She nods.

A heavy silence falls over them as they march only broken by the sound of their shoes through the snow.

* * *

As it turns out, the Northern Outpost is the current stronghold of the Senju. Most of the youngest children, and the eldest warriors lived here, as well as those women who did not become frontline fighters like Toka as well as a good half of the fighting force of the Senju Clan.

"You are the first outsider who has seen the inside of this outpost since your father's forces took refuge here nearly twenty-five years ago." Butsuma-dono tells her after dinner is finished and the two of them sit alone at a table in a nondescript room.

It seems that even here, the clan head lives with the same sparsity as the rest.

Chichi-ue had lost Ojiisama the last time Uzu had marched in the mainland. She supposes that Butsuma-dono is referring to that time.

"I am honored to be here." Mito folds her hands together so that they rest on top of the table, and sits very straight.

"Would you mind explaining why your uncle did not feel the same way?" Butsuma-dono mirrors her posture though he reaches for the teapot as he does so.

Mito beats him to it and pours tea for him instead of the other way around. He is still her senior by many years. It is her job to pour tea for him.

"Naosu-jisan is a medic." She begins. "And you asked him to break his oaths."

"Oathbreaker." Butsuma-dono raises his tea to his lips and snorts. "Your father was fond of mentioning that word as well when met with resistance. Oh, how he hated that word."

"The life of an oathbreaker is a living death." Mito counters gently.

These mainland people of the Land of Fire do not understand. In a harsh land nearly subsumed by water, it is essential that people abide to the customs that help everyone survive.

"Better alive than dead." Butsuma-dono looks away. "Chigusa Naosu has killed himself and the students he led all the way to a different nation."

Mito's heart drops to her stomach, but she holds firm. Just because Naosu-jisan and the others will not kill does not mean that they are defenseless. "They would rather it be so."

"Oaths are for those who live in peace and comfort." Butsuma-dono taps his fingers on the table. "The only people who cling to oaths are the ones who have the luxury to do so."

He thinks her people better off than hers. It is true in a sense.

At home, she does not have to fear her throat slit in the night while she sleeps. Still, even as the elder daughter of a king, she does not live in comfort. Winter is harsh. The sea is harsher.

"Oaths are for those who have honor to cling to." She meets Butsuma-dono's eyes. He does not look happy with her pronouncement, but then, he doesn't have to be. "Naosu-jisan's interpretation of honor is quite different from yours."

"Does he not have a clan or a family?" Butsuma-dono's grip on his teacup is hard. "Doesn't he believe that they will grieve for him if he dies of his folly? What of the lives of his students?"

So he does feel guilty for leaving the rest of the medic team behind in hostile territory. He does not understand, and he does not entirely want to.

"If they had come with us and lived, it would be worse than if they had died."

Butsuma-dono looks like he wants to say more, but the door slides open, and a clanswoman bows foward.

"Butsuma-sama, Akai-sama is coming to see you, and she will not wait."

Butsuma-dono is on his feet in an instant. "She knows that she ought to-"

A frail white-haired woman ducks under the clanswoman's arm. "You have been gone so many months, Butsuma." She is using crutches.

Mito would think that her hair is white with sickness or age, but then she remembers that Tobirama's hair is white and his eyes are red and...this must be his haha-ue.

 _She is Hashirama's haha-ue as well._

Senju Akai-dono. She must have met Chichi-ue as well.

"You could not be patient enough to wait for me?" Butsuma-dono sweeps her up in his arms and carries her down the hall. "Do not tell me that another half hour to wait was too long when you have already borne my absence for months on end."

"I wanted to see Mito-chan." Akai-dono waves a hand in her direction. "Mito, child, come along so I can actually see you."

It seems to be a private type of relationship, the one that Butsuma-dono shares with his wife, but Akai-dono has asked that she follow, so she does.

"Little Tyrant." Butsuma-dono whispers as he nudges a door open with his foot. "You know I will suffer should I lose you."

Akai-dono looks up at him with red eyes. "You already suffer when you have me." She says quite frankly. "I suffer as I live, and you suffer as you watch me. It is why you do not want to see me."

Butsuma-dono looks away, his face pinched. "I have offended yet another medic, a good one this time."

Akai-dono laughs and pats his cheek with a hand. "I do not need another medic to tell me what I already know, Butsuma." She turns to Mito. "And how is Naokano? She has not written to me for long."

"Haha-ue is well." Mito bows, because when she is not talking to Butsuma-dono about Naosu-jisan's oaths she is a polite young woman. "Though Lady Biwa was in residence when I was last home, and that is a strain on her happiness."

Haha-ue and Lady Biwa are good friends. It is Chichi-ue's heart that causes complications with Haha-ue's mood.

Mito rather thinks that she does not want the type of life her parents lead.

Haha-ue and Chichi-ue are friends, though Haha-ue loves him more than he loves her, and for the most part, their lives together are not unhappy.

They would not be married though if there had no contract that bound them together since childhood, and that would make them much happier.

Mito rather thinks that she would like to love and be loved should she ever get married.

"To the end of my days, I will not understand why-"

Akai-dono sets a finger over Butsuma-dono's lips. "Peace. Ashina's private affairs are just that, private."

Butsuma-dono removes her finger. "Little Tyrant," he begins "do not tell me what I already know."

This tenderness in his eyes is not for anyone else. It is a very private sort of tenderness that Mito does not feel as though she wants to intrude further upon. She edges her way out the door, only to run into Toka searching for her in the hallway.

"Oh, there you are, Mito." Toka takes her by the wrist and drags her down the hall. "While we are here, you are to share a room with me, and I have to show you where everything is."

Mito nods, and lets herself be carried away by Toka's quick strides.

* * *

Now that they are living in the outpost, the days turn kinder once more. She works with what healers there are among the Senju, teaching them techniques she'd learned at Naosu-jisan's knee-how to monitor heart rates with chakra instead of taking a shinobi's pulse, how to focus chakra for internal injuries, how to make use of a patient's chakra to stitch wounds together.

Naosu-jisan had sent her word that they had made it back to Uzu safely. It is enough to assuage her worry about the fate of the team she'd left behind.

She does visit Akai-dono at least once daily, though she has stopped trying to help after her first attempts had been waved away. "Oh, child, Uzu's medics told me years ago that I've not long to live. Each day is a blessing, do not worry yourself over me."

Mito does not delude herself into thinking that she is better than Naosu-jisan at his chosen craft, but the raw ache of what she cannot change settles heavily into her stomach.

Akai-dono seems to appreciate the company though, so she visits once daily.

This morning, she is rearranging the medicinal stores in the western part of the compound, when Hashirama ducks in through the door.

"You are still busy, Mito-chan?"

She sorts the green sweetgrass seeds from the blue without looking up. "The stores are often haphazard after being raided for supplies. It is not supposed to be this way." If the supplies are organized, they are much easier to find in a hurry.

"Will you not go out for a walk?" Hashirama offers her a hand. "I will help you sort the seeds after."

She looks at his proffered hand and frowns. Of course, she would love to take a walk, but the seeds have different properties and she does not want to leave them like this.

"It will only be a short walk." Hashirama begs her with his dark eyes. "And it is close to spring so the weather is warmer now."

"The weather is always warm." It is April, closer to the end of winter than it is to the planting season, but the Land of Fire is strangely warm.

"Please, Mito-chan?" It is strange that he wants to spend more time with her enough to beg. She knows that going out walking with him would be improper. He is heir to the Senju Clan, and here she is just Mito. More than that though, she would not want to confuse his future wife as Haha-ue had been confused by Chichi-ue's relationship with Lady Biwa. He is destined for an alliance marriage, that is the way of things. She does her best to discourage him, but Senju Hashirama is dense enough to stay, to come back and ask again. "Or should I call you Mito-sensei? Mito-sensei, would you like to go out for a walk?"

She muffles a giggle. The younger children of the Senju clan have taken to calling her Mito-sensei, but hearing Hashirama call her such a title is silly beyond reason. "You should only call me Mito-sensei if you want me to teach you something."

He plops himself into a chair. "If you do not mind, will you teach me how to heal?"

"You want to know how to heal?"

He is sorting seeds with her now, head bowed over the table as he separates the blue from the green. "Yes. Though I do not think that I want to take the medic's oath." He pauses for a moment to look at her, brown eyes earnest. "I do not think I can do what they do, but I want to know more about how to save my clansmen than just preventing blades from striking them down."

"Well," there is no harm in teaching him surely. "We will have to begin with fish so that you do not accidentally hurt those comrades."

She should not be surprised that Senju Hashirama is far more advanced than she gives him credit for.

She is also not surprised when he finally does persuade her to walk about the outpost with him. Hashirama is good at being charming.

* * *

When May comes, they move out of the outpost once more to the uneasy truce in the plainlands. No one likes the idea of a truce but no one would rather fight either. So they live for weeks dreading the attack to come, or at least, Mito does.

The truce breaks at the end of May, when the Uchiha attacks the Camp at dusk when the local warlord has the Senju complete a job previously promised to the Uchiha.

This time, Mito has no comrades who must hide behind a barrier. She dives into the fray herself among the brawling melee of limbs and sprays of blood red as her hair. She pulls injured Senju to safety inside a tent when she can, and then stands guard over that.

With her seals, with her tanto, with mostly her wits, she evades the swordstrokes of the Uchiha attacker and strikes true.

There is blood on her hands and death in her gaze. _A first kill, but likely not the last._

Far over, on the other side of camp the Senju line breaks.

The first thing she sees is smoke.

The second, fire.

The third, a head of wild black hair and red red eyes, cruel lips stretched into a mocking smile.

There is something bloodthirsty about the energy on the other side of the battlefield. Something not quite human…something not even like her hanyou brother. For all his bloodlust, Kyoya-niisama is a kind soul.

It reeks of evil.

She sees Butsuma-dono fling himself towards the breach in the line, sees Hashirama rise above on his wooden golem on the other side of the battlefield shrieking a word that might have been Madara-so this is the demon, Uchiha Madara-and she falls back.

She has to protect the wounded behind her.

There-a boy, Isao, she remembers Isao, she cured his cough earlier this spring-he's tripped and there is a sword above him, waiting to fall.

She dives forwards, a hand outstretched, chakra pushing for the first seal that comes to mind.

The explosion rings in her ears on contact, but what it does to the attacking Uchiha is worse. Body parts fall down all around them, and blood sprays the air like red rain, sticking to her skin like a stain.

Tobirama pulls her back to her position in front of the tent and bundles Isao with her. "Snap out of it." He growls. "This isn't over yet." And then he is away, and she settles herself back into the rhythm of dodging and stabbing.

There will be time to consider what she's done later.

* * *

The aftermath is the time to tend to the wounded and bury the dead.

Now that it is over, it's her job to tend to the wounded as others bury the dead.

"I need more bandages." She calls. There's a man, no more than a small boy, bleeding out under her hands. She needs to be able to bandage him. She has to conserve chakra for others that will be coming in. She has lost too much chakra while fighting.

It will not be enough to save everyone.

It will not be nearly enough.

"There's no more, Mito-sensei. You used up the last of it yesterday." The boy gasps beneath her hands. No help for it then, the seal work for this next bit is still experimental, but the boy under her hands won't make it if she doesn't act and she has to act.

She's so tired of the iron tang of blood, the acrid scent of smoke. The Uchiha favor fire.

She could learn to hate it.

She shakes the thought away and concentrates. There, the severed vein over the intestines. There, burns spreading over the third and fourth ribs. Mito takes a deep breath, filters out the smell of burned flesh, and one of her hands glows green.

The other over the boy's heaving chest draws a simple but elegant spiral.

"Am I going to die, Mito-sensei?"

Mito spares a thought for the boy. He's only thirteen or so, too young to ask her a question like this and mean it. He truly thinks that he's going to die.

She smooths back his hair and smiles as his wounds stitch closed. The seal helps to make her control more precise. She who had always lacked the expert's precision can now heal even the worst wounds with this seal. "No. You won't die if I can help it." At the moment, she can help it even if it drains more chakra than she thought it would.

His eyelids flutter closed. "Oh. Thank you, Mito-sensei."

Now that his condition is stable, there are others groaning all about her to treat, and better not to think. She's tiring, but there is more to do still.

The air in this tent stinks of blood and worse and the terrible heat of a summer evening doesn't make it much better.

She loses track of how many men she's soothed, which ones she's healed and which ones she cannot save. There are too many that she cannot save, not enough chakra, not enough time, not enough bandages, not enough everything.

"You need to go get help, Niisan." That should be Tobirama then, and the other that he is speaking to, Hashirama.

She does not pay attention. There is a patient who wants water.

"There isn't-I'm too low on chakra, and Mito-chan, I haven't seen Mito-chan since the fighting started-"

"I saw her." Tobirama says. "She was fine."

Mito rises from where she'd been pouring water. The Senju brothers are supporting a man between them.

Hashirama catches sight of her, and his look is one of such relief that she feels as though she can push on just a little more, despite how tired she is. He's lit up like a star. "Oh, thank goodness, Mito. Help us, please."

It's only when Tobirama lays the man down that she recognises who he is.

Her heart leaps into her mouth. _Butsuma-dono._

The Senju Clan Head is bleeding out in her medical tent, and she is so low on chakra that even standing is difficult. "I'll do my best." She undos the chest plate first, with shaking hands, and continues on as the Senju Brothers help with the rest.

Tobirama is white and pale, his hands balled into fists. He doesn't think Butsuma-dono will live. She'll prove him wrong. She has to.

Hashirama is swaying, his eyes unfocused, and it's likely that he needs medical attention as well.

"You'll fix this." Tobirama snaps. "You won't do your best. You'll do whatever it takes-"

"Tobi!" Hashirama catches Tobirama by the elbow before he can stalk forward. "Mito will do her best and that's all we can ask." Hashirama pulls Tobirama out toward the entrance of the tent, but he staggers and collapses as he does so. "Leave her to help."

Tobirama catches him and looks around the tent. It is in a state of disarray she knows. It had to be moved earlier in the morning, and everything has not been set in their proper places.

She breathes in the scent of blood, and the bitter iron tang settles over her tongue and slithers down her throat.

Her hands glow a flickering green. Not enough chakra. Not enough for a full scan.

A rib's punctured the left lung. Another has been completely shattered. There's no broken skin, but Butsuma-dono is breathing harshly, and the state of his internal organs makes her want to lose what little food is in her stomach.

The blood pooling in his chest cavity is a funeral shroud. She can't see the extent of the other injuries. _What sort of weapon would-_ No time. She's got no time. Repair the rib that's ruptured the lung first. Then the lung. Worry later. She draws the spiral over Butsuma-dono's chest, but it's not enough.

The last time she'd seen him, he had been fighting Uchiha Madara, but fine. _Uchiha Madara. Did Uchiha Madara do this?_

Blood's still pouring over her hands, and Butsuma-dono coughs wetly. She pushes more chakra into the wounds.

They won't close, and she's so tired. The ruptured lung is slowly healing now, but Butsuma-dono still hasn't stopped bleeding. It's not quick, but it is steady and she doesn't know if she has enough chakra to keep going.

Her hands have gone numb.

"Best stop, Mito-chan." Butsuma-dono's awake. "No need to cry, child. Men die every day."

 _I'm crying?_ She brushes a bloody hand over her face. She can't tell. It's all so wet. "But, but-" Senju Butsuma is not just a man. He is Chichi-ue's good friend. He is...a leader of men. He should not have to be so resigned to death.

He's still so young still. Barely forty. It is too young to die. She'd thought that of the boy under her hands. She thinks that now of the man before her. Butsuma-dono is still too young to die.

She focuses more. The shattered bone needs to knit together. Her next job. She has to focus on that. She can't think.

"...a man like anyone else." Butsuma-dono's speaking but she can barely hear him over the roar of fatigue in her ears, the headache and her aching bones. "Stop before you kill yourself, child. You are a princess of your people, and you've already given me a few hours to say goodbye."

"No." She gasps and sniffs. _I'm crying. I'm too old to cry. Not here._ "Can't let you die." She's older than the way she's acting, but the blood won't stop, and she can't stop it even though the trickle is slow, much less replenish it. She can't feel her hands anymore, they're so numb and cold without chakra even in the balmy summer air. Butsuma-dono is drowning in his own blood. He coughs again, the sound wet and awful. "Just like any other man, child." He wipes the mess of blood and tears from her cheek with a sleeve. "It is a good day to die. Anymore of your chakra and I'll be pleading with your father to forgive me for my sins."

"You have to go back to talk to Akai-dono." He'd promised when he left just a month ago, that he'd be back with fresh tea and her favorite cakes when July rolled around once more.

He has to go back.

"My little tyrant will forgive me." Butsuma-dono sighs. "She'll understand that this is the end of the line."

There is black tugging at her vision, and she can't feel her hands.

Tobirama's back now, after setting Hashirama down. "How are you feeling?" He asks, his gaze intent on Butsuma-dono's face.

"I am alive for the moment. Such a streak of good luck is unlikely to last." Butsuma-dono's wounds have to hurt, but her vision's swimming. She can't help him. "Where is your brother? I need to speak with him."

"Niisan will be here soon, Chichi-ue. He'll be here soon." _How? Hashirama is passed out on the other side of this tent._ "He'll be here soon."

It is the last thing she hears. _Hashirama will be here soon. He'll make it right._

Her arms give out beneath her, and she sinks towards the earth.

* * *

There is a tightness in her chest when she awakens that will not go away. She is not where she passed out.

No, there's Tobirama sitting on the other side of the room in the dust, a bottle of cheap sake in his hands. "You're useless." He spits at her. "What good were you when I thought you could do something?"

She flinches. "Butsuma-dono-"

"Dead." Tobirama hisses, but he doesn't move from his place near the door. "No thanks to you."

The tightness in her chest warps into a sharp pain. _I can't breathe._

 _Can't-_

The feeling is like drowning beneath the surface. The face of the dead fisherman comes back to her, distorted features, bulging eyes, blood on her hands, the rasp of Butsuma-dono's breathing-

"Breathe." Tobirama's shaking her shoulders. His breath smells sour and his shaking doesn't help her the slightest. "Breathe!"

"Let go of her." Toka shoves him aside and holds her still. "Mito? Mito? Are you alright? We made the march back to the Northern Outpost already. Tobi carried you back, but he's been useless ever since."

 _Tobirama did?_

She takes a deep breath, and her vision snaps back into place. "Butsuma-dono?"

Toka blinks rapidly, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. "Butsuma-sama wouldn't want you to be sad. You did all you could."

Tobirama storms from the room, the door slamming heavily behind him.

"Don't mind him. He's abrasive when he's sad." Toka waves a hand in the direction where Tobirama had gone dismissively. "You did the best you could. You nearly killed yourself keeping up with that amount of chakra output. Hashirama was beside himself. No one blames you but Tobirama and that is because my little cousin is blind when he's grieving."

Mito nods shakily. There's still blood on her hands. They'd been washed, but she can still see the blood.

"Now, Akai-sama wants to see you since you're awake." Toka pulls her to her feet and supports her as they make their way down the hall.

Something akin to dread pools in Mito's stomach. _You're useless._

 _What was the purpose of coming here when all you are is useless?_

"Mito-chan?" Akai-dono pats her hand. "Mito-chan, we've written to Ashina. The border guard will be here to get you soon."

 _Useless._

She could not cure Akai-dono's illness.

 _Useless._

She could not save Butsuma-dono.

 _Useless._

She is going home.

"I'm sorry." The two words crawl out of her mouth and flops into the space between herself and Akai-dono. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'msorrysorrysorry-"

"Don't be sorry, child." Akai-dono opens her arms, and Mito _bawls._ "Don't be sorry. Butsuma knew what he was doing. He knew what his end would be. It must have been a great solace to him to know that he will be waiting in the Pure Land to welcome me. He did always want to make my life easy." Akai-dono runs a hand through Mito's loose hair. "Hush child, don't you cry…"

Her song is quiet, laced with terrible loss, but still she sings.

 _Useless._

 _I will learn to be better._

 _I will be better._

* * *

It is not the border guard who comes to retrieve her as Akai-dono says. It is Kyoya-niisama with wings as wide across as a man is tall.

Dark wings that block out the sun.

He lands in the courtyard, wings disappearing in a burst of youki which draws practically every warrior in the near vicinity.

She sees him coming from her seat by Akai-dono's window.

"I am here for my little kitten." Kyoya-niisama has dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He stands there in a dark haori and equally dark hakama completely unarmed but also completely unbothered by the swords pointed in his direction.

It will take more than swords to hurt Niisama.

"I am here." Mito calls weakly. She doesn't want to move, doesn't want to do much of anything.

Niisama turns his pale face up to look at her, the clawed tips of his fingers shining wickedly in the noonday sun. "Wait there, Little Kitten." He says without a hint of fanfare. "I will come and get you."

He dodges the sword strikes as easily as the wind and is outside the window in another moment. "You look unwell." He mutters, a dark frown on his lips. "Do you want me to extract your pain from their bodies?"

Clearly, Chichi-ue has warned Niisama about killing the Senju. Niisama is rarely so restrained as to ask beforehand. Normally, people who insult his little siblings just _die._

Mito shakes her head no. "I want to go home, Niisama."

"So you will." Niisama reaches inside and pulls open the clasp keeping the window shut, and then lifts her from the second story of the building as though she weighs nothing more than two feathers.

His claws are hard against her skin, but in the years that he's been alive, he's learned not to cut any of his so very mortal family members with them. He's learned to be careful.

She wraps her arms around his middle and breathes in the scent of the sea. She's almost forgotten it, the clean smell of salt and seaweed and ocean tears. It is a familiar smell, one that she hasn't smelled in what feels like lifetimes.

Mito blinks back tears. She is not a little child. She ought not cry any longer.

For all his attempts to play at the dress of man, Niisama's always cold and light, not as solidly there as her other brothers. It is true in a sense that his bones are hollow. He is so very much human though, regardless of his strange traits.

And though he is always cold, his love is warm.

"Hold on tight, Little Kitten." He whispers against her hair. "We'll be home before you can fall asleep."

" _Mito-chan?"_ It sounds like Hashirama's voice touched with a hint of horror. It wouldn't be Hashirama though, he has not been by to see her ever since she- _killed his chichi-ue_ -he wouldn't want to see her anymore. "Mito-chan, wait!"

It doesn't matter who it is.

Niisama's wings burst from his skin as his haori shifts to accommodate them. She feels the air shift as he flaps them once, and then they are gone, no more than a lazily rising dot against the sun.

* * *

She has not been home long, barely long enough to fall asleep, wake up, and sit down by her vanity mirror, when Kanae bursts through her door, still wearing the battle grieves of her training outfit.

"Neesan!" Her little sister laughs and tugs at her hands. "They're beaching a whale in the harbour, you've got to come and see. Masato-nii promised me a pair of carved hairpins this time. Come help me choose the right bones."

"They'll be the prettiest hairpins on the Island if Masato-nii is making them for you."

It is easy to fall back into the rhythm of excitement when it's Kanae's laughing green eyes she's looking into.

No one in the world has greener eyes than Kanae-chan.

Mito suddenly sweeps her sister into a tight hug.

"Neesan?" Kanae squeaks. "What's the matter Neesan?"

"Oh." Mito says as she thinks about everything she's seen on the mainland and tries to push away the raw, ugly ache in her chest. "I'm just so glad to see you, Kanae-chan."

"Mmm." Kanae nods. "Of course! I'm glad to see Neesan too! You've been away for so long."

Her sweet twelve year old little sister drags her out to the harbor where boats and harpooners are pulling in the whale, chattering excitedly all the while.

The Twins are there too, distracting everyone and getting underfoot. She catches sight of Korui-nii painting a seal onto the pier, Masato-nii directing the boats with his booming voice.

There, in the crowd is Haha-ue and Chichi-ue walking arm in arm.

There, on one of the boats is Obaasan pulling with the strength of ten much younger women.

There, overhead is Kyoya-niisama circling lazily.

Naosu-jisan stands near the medical tent off to the side just in case someone is injured when they roll the whale up onto the beach.

Everyone is here.

She is home, under this clear blue sky, among the squawking of gulls and the spray of sea foam.

She is home. This truly is home.

"Choose my bones for me, Neesan!" Kanae bounces up and down on the waves, singing cheerfully in her sweet voice, her exuberant energy barely contained in her dancing feet.

"Alright, alright!" Mito laughs. "I'll choose the best ones so you'll have the prettiest hairpins in the whole entire world."

Here, out on the sea, her stomach settles.

It is good to be home.

* * *

 **A.N.** Many things occur in this chapter, but we do get to see Butsuma be human before he dies, which I think is important. We also see Mito's successes and her failures, what she chooses to value as important and several cultural differences. At any rate, I still have stuff typed up, so have another chapter.

Thank you so much to Mikurocks1234 (Don't worry, this is just the Mito perspective with more backstory. The events of Sunfall/Moonrise are still the same events.), and Elise142 (I just think it's interesting is all, that a princess from a foreign land married Hashirama, and by all accounts they were very happy before his death. Now, this isn't really canon compliant, but I am really fond of character studies, so.) for reviewing!

And everyone else who favorited and followed.

~Tavina.


	3. A Family Portrait

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

* * *

"Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore."

-Robin Hobb, _Fool's Fate_

* * *

Hashirama sends her five letters that she doesn't read in the span of five months. She is lost in her sealwork now, where she ought to have been all along, but the sixth one sent just a week after the fifth is stained with something looks like a smudge of blood and a torrent of tears.

Seeing it makes her heart break down just a little.

She concedes and opens the letter. It is an inane little thing about the weather and the products of his flower garden project stained with his grief and marred by the many times he's crossed something out. Still, she can read between the lines.

She opens the fifth letter.

'Mito.' It says. 'Haha-ue wanted me to tell you…' a splatter of ink 'that she found you her most wonderful visitor in a very long time. She would like to have told you herself, but she and Chichi-ue are very happily together now. It hurts so, in my heart to lose, and I know you don't read these since you haven't replied, so I'm not burdening you with much of my grief. I just wish there was someone I could tell. So many people depend on me that it's hard to think of saying that I feel hollow inside. Still, I hope peace treats you kindly and that your family is well. Hashirama.'

Her heart drops to her stomach.

She opens the fourth.

'Mito.' It says. 'I am so very tired and lonely and frightened, and I do not know what to do or even if I am doing the right thing at all. Chichi-ue has been Clan Head all my life, and I don't know what the right thing is. I want so badly to speak of peace, but all anyone ever wants to talk of is war. You once believed in my dream, but now you've seen more of our situation. Do you still believe that there's peace on this Earth for me or any of us? Hashirama.'

She opens the third.

'Mito.' It says. 'Mito, I am sorry that Tobi offended you by saying such horrible things. He is entirely repentant I promise. When he next sees you again, I will make him apologize to you on his knees. You've saved so many of our family. _I_ thank you. Hashirama.'

She opens the second.

'Mito.' It says. 'Will you never speak to me again? I sent you a letter and you did not reply, though Uzumaki-dono has written to say that you received it. Have I offended you somehow? Sometimes, when I think too long of how you left, I cannot help but feel that you hate me. I know you were not happy when you left, but please, write back to me sometime. Hashirama.'

She takes a deep breath and opens the first.

'Mito.' It says, after it asks after her health. 'You never told me you were Uzumaki Mito-hime, and neither did Haha-ue or Chichi-ue or anyone else who knew. Toka suspected, but even she didn't enlighten me. I feel very foolish about this somehow, even if you didn't have any reason to tell anyone. You're my friend, and I didn't even know who you were. It's only now that I'm beginning to realize that I don't know that much about what you like at all. I'm not complaining. I know it was safer that way, but we are friends aren't we? You'll talk too instead of just letting me spill my thoughts all over the place in every conversation, won't you? Please, Mito, I know that a princess must have many friends to take up her time, but can we be friends again? Hashirama.'

She reaches across her writing desk and pulls out her inkwell.

There is much she has to say to her foolish mainlander friend, namely that she does not hate him in the slightest, and no, she's had a period of silliness, but she _does_ read his letters.

"Who're you writing to, Mito-nee?" Aruta pokes his head in through her door and wherever Aruta goes, Ashiro is not far behind.

"Yeah, who is it?" Ah, there's Ashiro. As she thought, the Twins are not far apart.

Mito throws Hashirama's letters in her desk drawer before her brothers tumble through the door. "No one you two need to be concerned about."

"Ah but Mito-nee!" They shriek as one. "We want to know about your," they take a deep breath, "handsome, dashing, charming, interesting, foolish, strange, foreign, mainlander friend too!"

Mito resists the urge to hide her face in her hands. "Why do I even like you?" She wonders aloud. Of course the Twins already know who she is writing to. They've probably already read her mail, knowing them.

"You don't like us." They chirp as they drag her out of her seat and down the hall. "But you do love us because we're your only little brothers."

"I love Kanae-chan." Mito protests. "I don't love either of you enough to fill a water jug." Not true. The Twins might be terribly annoying and buoyant and fond of all the wrong things like cheating at card games, and taking what doesn't belong to them-other people's spending money-but they _are_ her little brothers, and she loves them dearly.

The Twins nod along though. "You might not love us." They sigh dramatically. "But everyone loves Shiko-chan, you have to! She's so sweet it would be a cruelty not to!" And then they are bouncing down the hall and since they still have a hold of her hands, all she can do is follow. "But come to dinner, Mito-nee! Obaasan's made ikayaki and it's the bestest ikayaki on the entire Island!"

Mito laughs and lets them drag her along. "I love you both more than the ikayaki."

They look up at her with wide hazel eyes. "You do?"

They are only fourteen, not yet grown into their long gangly limbs and enhanced chakra levels, though they want so badly to run away to sea. Perhaps in another year, Chichi-ue will let them.

For a moment, Mito is struck by a sense of sadness. _Isao nearly died, and he is just about the same age as the Twins._

 _Yet he'd been fighting so long that he's accepted it._ What would have to happen for peace to be assured? What can she do to help Hashirama's dream of peace?

 _No child should ever have to fight and bleed and die before being a child._

"But of course." She smiles at the Twins. "How could a plate of squid, however excellently prepared, ever merit the same amount of love as my only little brothers?"

Aruta pouts. "Shiko-chan would disagree."

Ashiro swings their joined hands back and forth and nods along. "Shiko-chan's _in love._ " He singsongs. "Shiko-chan _likes_ Ichiro-usahaya no Habiki-sama!"

"I _do not._ " Kanae flicks water droplets at Ashiro. "He is a very nice dancer, that's _it_."

"Shiko-chan's in love!" The Twins cry together. "She'll go back to the waves! Where those of the formal name Kanae always go!"

"Boys." Haha-ue intercedes before Mito's little sister, the baby of their family, decides to upend the tureen of seaweed soup over her brother's heads. "Don't tease your sister, of course she doesn't love Habiki-sama. You all are far too young to decide to love anyone."

"Aw, but Haha!" Ashiro clutches his heart. "She blushed when he said she danced prettily!"

Habiki-sama complimented her sister? This is news to her. Mito spares Kanae-chan a glance.

Her little sister's hiding her face behind her hands, her face as red as her hair. "Haha!" She wails. "Tell them that's just because Habiki-san is _far too pretty!_ He's not even partly human and it's not _fair_."

"Habiki is what?" Kyoya-niisama is joining them for dinner today then, dressed in a simple off white haori and slate gray hakama pants. He wears no under kimono, so his chest is bare. In the low light, downy feathers carve light patterns over his alabaster skin. "Do not tell me that you think Habiki is pretty, Lovely Girl."

Kanae pouts further. "It's your fault, Niisama"

Kyoya-niisama raises one finely arched brow at her. "My fault?"

"Now he calls me Lovely Girl too." Kanae jabs a triumphant finger in his direction. "And he only calls me that because he heard you call me that."

Niisama frowns. "I will be having _words_ with Habiki."

"You'll have more than words." Masato-nii grouses. "You'll be having blows as well and stinking up the bay with all that blood."

"Blood does not stink." Niisama replies. "You are merely far too green and cowardly, Porcupine Child."

Masato-nii bristles impressively. At twenty years of age, he is no longer a child, but two words from Niisama is enough to get under his skin. "And you are an uncouth savage." Masato-nii is a craftsman not a warrior.

Niisama does not always respect that.

Niisama shrugs. "I am an albatross. Am I expected to have a man's manners?"

"You are my son, and half of your blood is the blood of a man." Chichi-ue steps through the door, looks around at the scene, and shakes his head. _He might shake his head at us, but his eyes are smiling._ "And that means you will not bait your little brother, Kyoya."

Niisama inclines his head in Chichi-ue's direction. "If that is your wish."

Niisama might not listen to anyone else in the world, but he'd drop everything for two people and two people only-his respected father, and his beloved Lovely Girl.

It is just the way of things, that Niisama loves Kanae-chan the most out of all of them. He is an attentive and caring brother to the rest of them, though he and Masato-nii never see eye to eye. He loves all of them, in his icy way of his, Mito knows that.

It is just that if Mito asks him for the moon, he'd laugh and tell her that he cannot do it, but if Kanae-chan asks him for the moon, he'd be out the door before she's even finished her request.

Mito doesn't find that to be so strange or bitter. She'd drop everything if Kanae-chan asked her for the moon too. Kanae inspires that sort of motivation in people.

"Now now, is this how to treat our family?" Obaasan pats Niisama on the head, and he preens under the gentle touch with a self satisfied look in his water-blue eyes. "I slaved away making ikayaki for all of you to fight over who took my youngest granddaughter dancing last night?"

A chorus of "No, of course not, Obaasan" rises, punctuated only by Chichi-ue's guilty look.

Obaasan sets the food on the table, careful to keep Niisama's live squid just a little bit away from everyone else's cooked food. Niisama eyes it with relish, clawed fingers tapping the stone table. Kanae-chan snuggles in under his arm to watch the show.

Niisama eating live food will always be a bit of a bloody mess.

"Now." Obaasan examines the empty place at the table with her sharp green eyes, a hand on her hip. "Where is Korui? You would think that after twenty-two years that boy would learn not to miss dinner."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Korui-nii rushes in trailing soap suds behind him while still scrubbing ink stains from his hands. "The emergency seal pattern was down, and I've spent all afternoon trying to get the mori into some semblance of agreement…" He looks once around the table and takes the only empty spot beside Kyoya-niisama. "I'll be on time tomorrow."

Everyone around the table breaks out into a sudden fit of laughter. "That," Mito gasps. "Is the biggest lie I've ever heard you tell."

Korui-nii sends her a disgruntled look. "Bah." He waves his fingers in her direction in a shooing motion. "Go away, little sister."

Obaasan's ikayaki is more delicious than anything Mito's ever had, before or since.

* * *

"Masa-nii!" Kanae bounces up and down in front of Masato-nii's workbench. "Masa-nii you said you were going to finish today."

He had been working on her hairpins off and on for the better part of several months, whittling the large rib bone down into the smaller tubes fit for a little girl's hair.

Mito had been sitting next to him, discussing the merits of eight point sealing versus seven point when Kanae burst in.

"Masato." He corrects her gently. "Masa just means exalted, and I doubt I am your most exalted Niisan."

"But then I'd be calling you Exalted Leader Niisan." Kanae mutters. "Surely, I don't think of that every time I talk to you either." She clambers onto the bench next to him anyway. "Oh, Masa-nii don't be grumpy. You know I love you."

"Yes, of course you do." Masato-nii prods their little sister's cheek with the blunt end of his chisel. "You will just always take Niisama's side on things because you love him better."

"Masato-nii." Mito cuts in. "You shouldn't bait Kanae-chan like that." She sets her hand on her brother's shoulder. "We all love you. You know that."

He sighs and sets his work down on the table. "Of course." The twist of his lips is a little sardonic. "No one minds of course, that the King's third son is the family disappointment."

"Masa-nii!" Kanae crosses her arms and frowns, swinging her legs back and forth almost violently. "No one thinks you're disappointing."

"Everyone's just too polite to mention it." Masato-nii crosses his arms and stares back at them. "But of course, neither of you can be disappointing. Mito-chan is the Pearl of Uzu and Kanae-chan's the Little Storm." He runs a hand through his sweat soaked hair and sighs. "Niisama is the fabulous hanyou. Korui-nii is the perfect heir. The Twins are so mischievous that you'd have to love them. Where does that leave me?" _A craftsman, not a warrior._

 _A little different than the rest of us._

"It leaves you to tell me not to stink up the bay." Niisama's standing in the doorway, dripping with seawater and blood. There are several large gashes across his torso, already closing right before their eyes, and a patch of hair missing from his scalp. It looks like he went and had it out with Habiki-sama anyway. He didn't lose all of his hair though, so it most likely ended up as a draw. "Unfortunately, I don't listen well, Little Brother."

"Oh please." Masato-nii snorts. "You all have to look away whenever Asuran visits because no one wants to know-" He takes a deep breath as though ready to dive into a rant.

Mito has the strong desire to cover up her ears. Whatever her brother did with his lover is _not her business_ and she _doesn't want to know about it in lurid detail._

"No one cares who you love or who you don't." Niisama smiles. "But go ahead, I'd love to hear the details so that I may murder Asuran slowly for hurting my little brother's feelings even the slightest bit."

Masato-nii's mouth snaps shut like an oyster shell.

"Masa-nii." Kanae chirps in the intervening silence. "We avoid you sometimes, but not because you're disappointing." All eyes in the room turn toward the little girl who has picked up her hairpins and holds them up to the light.

They are truly beautiful, carved with little spiraling images and delicate waves. Masato-nii had cared so much for them even if he didn't show it.

"We avoid you sometimes because you're so grumpy." Kanae pats his hand. "We know you love us, but you don't make it so easy to spend time with you. No one thinks you're disappointing."

Masato-nii flushes from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck.

Kanae had only started to set her hairpins back on the table when Masato-nii interrupts once more. "They're done. You can take them now."

"Thank you!" Kanae flashes him a brilliant smile and then she bounces over to Niisama. "Look see, aren't they pretty?"

Niisama inclines his head. "Never as lovely as my lovely girl." A clawed hand tugs at one of Kanae's stray curls. "But yes, the Porcupine Child is very good at what he does. Of course, they're pretty." He and Masato-nii share a look over Kanae's shoulder.

Kanae laughs and takes Niisama's hand. "Shishou's holding a bonfire where he's boiling squid stingers, you should come and see. And oh you promised to…"

Niisama leans over, and sweeps her off of her feet, lifting her until she is sitting high on his shoulder. She laughs and claps, her hair a tangled riot of red curls. "I know what I promised you, Lovely Girl." Niisama brushes her hair away from his face. "Lessons with the Koto was it?"

Mito's little sister nods and claps excitedly. "Niisama knows me so well!"

Her excited chattering fades into indistinct mumblings as both she and Niisama disappear down the hallway.

"Did she not think that I know you all love me?" Masato-nii sits down heavily on his bench. "I know I am loved."

"She isn't wrong you know." Mito adds gently. "You are so often prickly that it makes it hard to show how we love you."

"I am unlike you." Masato says as he fiddles with another piece of bone. "I want nothing more than to be left alone with everyone. Perhaps that makes me grumpy and sullen."

Mito laughs. "No, that just makes you yourself."

He opens his desk drawer and pulls out a bone comb. "This one's for you, Mito-chan."

Mito takes it carefully, admiring the profusion of mainland flowers woven through the spiraling waves of Uzu. "Where did you learn about mainland flowers?"

Her third brother hasn't been away from home before, doesn't prefer sailing or traveling, so she is a bit at a loss. "Kyoya-niisama consented to bring me samples of the flowers he sees on his travels." Masato-nii shrugs. "He does not know what I want them for so they are not always well preserved, but the ones on your comb are poppies, or so I am told."

 _Poppies._ Mito rolls the word over in her head.

"They were red." Masato-nii says suddenly. "A scarlet sort of red, like your hair Mito-chan."

"Thank you, Masato-nii." Mito tucks the comb away into her sleeve and kisses her brother on the cheek. It is just like her third brother to tuck away all of his softness behind his sharp edges, and only show his love by the little ways he thinks of others. "I always know that you are thinking of us."

Masato-nii blushes a bright, fiery red.

* * *

Winter is nothing more a distant memory, and spring has rolled around once more. Mito, now more than ever rather wishes that it hasn't, because spring means that the harbor is open again, and Tanaka-san is once more taking jobs by commission.

He is not the Viper of Uzu without reason. Normally, this would be less of an issue, but this year, he greets his king and queen with a bow and proceeds to ask for a different sort of favor than leaving the island so that he may descend once more into a court full of poisonous nobles on the mainland.

"My apprentice is old enough to come with me this year." Tanaka-san begins with Kanae-chan peeping out from behind his arm. "I would like your permission to bring her with me."

Now Mito knows that Kanae's been the poisoner's apprentice for years now, and her little sister has serious aspirations for a position in the border guard, but isn't twelve too young for a mainland visit, even with the ever capable Tanaka-san?

She holds her tongue about that though, because she had asked Chichi-ue for the same sort of favor last year, and he had not said no to her.

Who is she to rain on her sister's parade if she wants to go? _I must offer her the same that has been offered to me._

 _If Kanae-chan dies, then we will grieve. We must grieve, and then we must move on._

"Absolutely not." Haha-ue hisses. "Never."

"Naokano." Chichi-ue says, the single word heavy in the air. "Why should we not offer the same opportunities to our younger daughter as we do the elder?"

"She is still a child." Haha-ue is not normally so ruled by her emotions, but, but- "And look at what the mainland did to Mito."

"Haha-ue." It isn't entirely her place to speak, but she will not let herself be used as an example of why her little sister may not have her freedom. "The mainland did nothing to me. My sadness and introspection is my own."

Kanae's eyes are wide, a shocked jade green. Mito's heart hurts at the sight of it.

Tanaka-san stands tall.

"Shiko-chan?" Chichi-ue leans forward, his fingers steepled together on the table. "Did Tanaka-san ask you to go with him?"

Kanae shakes her head. "I volunteered."

"You cannot be serious, Ashina." Haha-ue cuts back in. "You cannot let her go."

"Cannot?" Chichi-ue raises an eyebrow at her, a slight edge of sharpness to his voice. "I will remind you of this only once, Nao. I am your king."

Haha-ue presses her lips together tightly. Clearly, there will be more words about this very topic, but certainly not any more in front of Tanaka-san.

"I give you leave to take your apprentice with you on your travels." Chichi-ue inclines his head in respect for Tanaka-san's advanced age. "Go with the blessing of your king."

That they do not have the blessing of their queen is loud in the room despite the silence where Haha-ue would normally offer a blessing of her own.

Mito follows her sister and her sister's teacher out of the main hall. "Kanae-chan? You've packed well?"

Her sister nods. "Shishou helped."

She's no longer happy though, and for a moment, Mito harbors uncharitable thoughts towards her mother. _Kanae should always be happy._

"Kanae-chan, look at me." She takes her sister's face in her hands and presses a kiss to to Kanae's forehead, and then to both cheeks. "You have to do what you think is right. You can't let other people decide what you want to do with your life."

Kanae nods, but Mito's not finished. "You want to go to the mainland and learn to be an infiltrator and a poisoner and then you want to come back and earn your spot as the captain of the border guard. You can do that. If that's what you want to do, then you will find a way."

Kanae flings her arms around Mito's neck. "Thank you, Neesan."

Mito smiles. "Always." _Always._

 _I will always support your dreams whatever they may be. Big or small, they'll find a home in my heart._

"I have to go say goodbye to Niisama!" Kanae's running off down the hall. "And Shiro-nii and Ruta-nii and everyone!"

Tanaka-san meets her eyes for a moment after she rises. "Didn't think you'd take the side the Queen ought to have, Mito-hime."

Mito brushes the dust off of the edges of her sleeves. "I would be hypocritical if I did not allow my sister the same freedom that others have given me." And it is true. Her sister deserves the chance to make her own choices.

"She'll be safer than you were, and you weren't hurt by something time couldn't heal." Tanaka-san offers. "We're not going to a warzone just the court that I already play like a fiddle. She'll play my granddaughter. It's a believable enough ruse." His words are blunt, but true.

Time and distance has given her the space to heal. _I was not useless._

"I know." Mito walks with him down the hall. "I know. You love Kanae-chan as much as we all do."

He watches her for a long, silent moment. "You'll make some man a mighty fine queen one day, Mito-hime."

Hashirama's tanned face appears in her mind's eye for a moment. She doesn't want to be a queen, but- "Thank you very much for your kind words, Tanaka-san." The surly old man doesn't give out compliments often. She ought to take the kindness for what it is, a kindness, not a reminder of what will inevitably be her duty one day.

 _I will make a gracious queen to one of the many feuding kings in the Land of Water, or perhaps further, to the Land of Lightning._

 _It will be only my due._

Alliances, after all, are quite important.

* * *

Her little sister is gone for the months of June and July, celebrating her thirteenth birthday in a foreign land among nobles who frittered their days away in luxury and wealth.

Hashirama writes to her still, about the state of the war, the state of the Senju, and his hopes for the future. He is stronger now, more confident and cheerful than the morose letters he had sent her during her five months of silence. Perhaps it is a front now that he knows she reads her mail. Perhaps he doesn't want to worry her. Hashirama is so very good at trying not to worry people.

Sometimes, that bothers her. He asks so very little for himself, but always so much for others.

Still, he dreams of peace, and Mito can do nothing but encourage him.

Peace in Uzu may not be perfect, but it is certainly much better than the constant threat of death and destruction no matter where one turned. It is better than a child who still wants to live, but can only ask with shaking breaths if he will die before the sun sets.

Peace is not perfect by any means, but it is much more ideal.

So Mito tells him of the imperfections, is careful not to make it seem as though there are no problems here when there are.

On the mainland, Uzu has gained some sort of legendary status as a safe haven, where nothing truly terrible ever happened, where everyone is always happy, a utopia.

It could not be further from the truth. Peace brings with it different sorts of tensions.

Sometimes the winters are harsh, and food is difficult to find. Sometimes, a summer storm smashes the ships in the harbor, and it is a delicate and painful job to stitch them back together again with chakra and ink. Sometimes, entire ships are lost at sea and the widow's walk is crowded with the family members of a crew that will never sail again.

Sometimes there is sickness that the medics cannot cure, and the bodies must be buried far out at sea to prevent an infection.

Sometimes, but most times life is good.

"Mito-nee!" Aruta slings an arm around her shoulders. "Mito-nee guess what?"

She looks up, but Ashiro is nowhere to be seen. That brings a bit of tension to her spine. Wherever one goes, the other follows, so it is likely that they are planning to pull some trick on her.

"What?" She asks.

"Chichi will let us have our own ship this year!" He singsongs next to her ear. "And when he does we shall gather up a crew of our friends and some old hands and be on the hunt for whales." He tugs her to her feet, dancing to a tune only he can hear.

"Will he?" Mito asks. The news has cheered her, if only because the Twins have wanderlust and sea-fever coursing in the marrow of their bones. That Chichi-ue had finally agreed to let them go means that the house will settle down from their endless string of pranks.

"Yes, yes, yes! He has promised us so." Aruta tugs her about around the garden and into the house. "A new ship that we can call our own."

"Oh?" Mito laughs. "And have you decided on a name?"

Aruta swoons backwards dramatically. "The Whirlpool Queen, for Haha."

She has barely a second's notice before the water bucket flies from the ceiling and soaks her completely. In that second she pulls Aruta back so that he is equally soaked and sputtering.

"You were saying, little brother?" She asks.

"Aww." Ashiro hops down from his perch on the roofbeams. "This was no fun at all."

Aruta spits out a mouthful of water and glares at his brother. "I thought we agreed that we would wait until I passed before you let go?"

"Mito-nee was too fast for us." Ashiro looks over at her with a wide, cheeky grin. "I hope you'll forgive us for trying to soak you, but it's true that Chichi will let us leave soon."

"Am I the last one you had to joke with before you could leave in peace?"

"Nah." The Twins shrug as one. "Shiko-chan isn't back yet, and we wanna dunk her in the bay before we go, and also tease her about Habiki-san a few more times."

Mito knows Ichiro-usahaya no Habiki-sama, King of his Sea, passingly well. He is a friend of Niisama's and he has paid her court for a few months summers ago. She had found him ultimately, charming but strange.

"Don't do that." Mito ruffles both heads of hair, the dry and the dripping. "She doesn't like it when you do."

"Ah but that's half the fun." They chorus together. "You've gotta admit it's rather fun, right?"

"I don't like it very much when my little sister is teased." Still, the Twins don't tease in meanness and only in fun so she lets it go. "Still, Kanae-chan will be home in just a few more days, so if you're patient enough, you'll be able to dunk her in the bay."

They nod quickly and whirl off to do whatever it is they do when they are not luring innocents into their traps. "Bye bye, Mito-nee! Have fun with your sealing session."

Mito waves them off and returns to the stone bench in the water garden where she had left her notes.

* * *

That night, dark wings grow larger out of the setting sun, scattering the noisy gulls all the way down the beach. Mito sees them coming and heads out to wait on the sea strand.

When they land, their shape morphs into that of a tall, dark haired woman with corpse gray skin and icy blue eyes. She has no claws on her hands, but her lips are pale and bloodless even against her ashen skin.

Chichi-ue had not fallen in love with her appearance, for Lady Biwa is not very pretty by human standards, but something intrinsically of value to her.

She turns all eyes towards her whenever she steps foot on the ground.

"Hello, Little Kitten." She says, her voice airy and breathlike. "Have you seen my hatchling? I have need of him." Oh, so that is what it is. Lady Biwa is here to find Niisama.

Mito cursties. "It is good to see you again, Lady Biwa." It is an unusual visit. Most times, Lady Biwa lingers in the Mountains of the Moon for more than two years before coming back. There is rarely anything urgent like this that would bring her to Uzu unannounced. "I'll go tell Niisama that you are here, if you'd like to come up into the house for tea and rice cakes?"

Lady Biwa regards her impassively, calmly, for what feels like hours before her lips part in a small smile. "Of course, my kitten. Tea and cakes sounds lovely."

Mito offers her a hand, and she takes it as they make their way on foot across the beach.

Mito is not entirely sure, even after nearly eighteen years, what to call Chichi-ue's youkai lover. Indeed, she's not sure that there is a way that anyone could possibly call this imposing woman next to her anything informal at all.

Certainly, she can't possibly call Lady Biwa, Biwa-baachan, though Niisama refers to Haha-ue familiarly enough.

Still, this is all not entirely for her to question. Lady Biwa is Lady Biwa, that is all.

Mito alerts the household staff of their coming, in time to make certain that Haha-ue and Chichi-ue both know it. There will likely be a party tonight, to celebrate, and Chichi-ue will take both his wife and his love dancing.

"My kitten, you are of the age where love is a consideration, yes?" Lady Biwa regards her with calm eyes, her head tilted to one side. It causes her braid to slip over her shoulder.

For all the time that Mito has known her, the Lady of the Iron Claw has looked exactly the same, unchanged by time, unweathered by the storm, with a face equally twenty and fifty all at once.

Unbidden, Hashirama's face comes back to her. _What is love?_ She hasn't yet found it. "It would not be unusual if I were to be married in the next few years, no." Mito allows.

The Tori people of the Mountain of the Moon don't believe in marriage. So perhaps, Lady Biwa may be persuaded that it is a form of love.

"I will never understand Ashina's people." The woman beside her sighs. "You will speak to me of alliances and marriages and the betterment of many people built off of your unhappiness, but that is not love." She turns her head so that she meets Mito's brown eyes squarely. Mito has forgotten, of course, that Lady Biwa has watched her lover and her best friend's marriage go on for nearly three decades now. "I am asking you of love, my kitten. All people deserve the right to love."

And yet, it is Chichi-ue's love that sows dissension... _No. It is not love,_ Mito decides. It is the inability to spend his entire life with only the one that he loves that is the issue.

"I have not yet found someone I love." Mito tells her the truth, because Lady Biwa, no matter her belief or disbelief in marriage, also never lies.

Lady Biwa hums. "You will one day." She says so with such confidence, as though duty may be shucked off like yesterday's fish guts to a cat.

"May I ask you something?" Mito has always wondered.

"You may." They are in the water gardens now, and Lady Biwa trails a hand through a fountain, water droplets gathering on her corpse gray skin.

"What led you to love Chichi-ue?" _Won't you have to say goodbye to him so much before any youkai suitor of yours?_ Mito doesn't quite understand it.

Her Chichi-ue's life is a drop in an ocean compared to the years the woman on her arm has to spend.

"Hmmm." The corners of Lady Biwa's bloodless lips curl upwards. "I think I fell in love with the way he laughed." She leans in to whisper conspiratorially in Neesan's ear. "As a young man, he was always laughing."

"But he left you." Duty said that he marry Haha-ue, and so he had. "And he will leave you again when he dies before you." It would be a cold day indeed, when Lady Biwa falls, but it is unlikely that it will be before Chichi-ue passes.

Perhaps her thoughts have a morbidly dark bent to them these days. Butsuma-dono's passing has done nothing to fill her thoughts with flowers and joy.

"That is so," Lady Biwa allows. "He will leave this realm before I do, and had I chosen a youkai lover it would likely not be so. It is like the turn of the wind," She murmurs, as they step into the front hall. "But it is better to have had and lost than to have never taken the first step, is it not so, Mito-chan?"

"What are you speaking of to my daughter so seriously, Biwa?" Chichi-ue's standing in the low light at the other end of the hall, by a painted red pillar.

"Your life." Lady Biwa replies. "And your passing."

"It must be a strange topic for you." Chichi-ue steps forward for an embrace. "You are slow to speak of the sad things."

"I have no desire to grieve before I must." She returns the hug fondly, but her eyes scan the hall before her. "And where is my wild war child?"

"Haha." Niisama steps into the hall while tucking something into his sleeve. "You're early."

Lady Biwa runs a hand through the dark flight feathers falling over his forehead. "The rebels have begun a resurgence. My brother has need of your skill."

Niisama freezes. "Kozei-jisan does?" He seems to be considering something very carefully. "At least stay for a few days, Haha. I will need to say goodbye to my siblings and Kanae-chan isn't home yet."

He is serious then, if he's dropped his nickname for Kanae. She is his 'lovely girl' nearly always.

Mito wonders for a brief moment, who the rebels are, and if they'd keep Niisama away from home for a long time. It doesn't seem likely though.

Haha-ue appears to gather Lady Biwa into a warm hug. "Stay for dinner, Biwa." She says. Her lips are smiling, but her eyes are not.

"Of course, Nao."

And so again, Mito's life changes.

* * *

 **A.N.** We get less of Hashirama, (In fact, nearly no Hashirama at all this chapter.) but we do get a closer look at the Uzumaki Family dynamics which were less fleshed out in the Sunfall/Moonrise POVs. Never fear though, Hashirama is rapidly returning in Chapter 4.

My other work is being worked on, but slowly and polishing the material I already have written for this is easier than trying to juggle the Bon arc of Bloodless right now, so this is getting done at a faster rate.

Thank you so much to mikurocks1234 and Elise142 for reviewing!

And everyone else who favorited and followed.

~Tavina.


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